When U.S. President Joe Biden addressed the Canadian Parliament in March, one phrase caught my attention: “A country,” he said, quoting former president Barack Obama, “is never more optimistic than its president or its leaders.” It was a message that was evidently lost on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Opposition MPs are asking why the Chinese diplomat recently expelled for being involved in threatening an MP’s family wasn’t removed sooner after it emerged that Canada’s intelligence agency knew for several years that he was spying on Falun Gong adherents and Uyghurs in Canada.
As of the time of this writing, there are 177 Chinese diplomats in Canada, including their representatives to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. This is second only to the United States, Canada’s closest ally and neighbour to the south, with 291 diplomats. The country with the third-highest number of diplomats in Canada is Japan, with 80 diplomats.
OTTAWA — It would be against the law for Saskatchewan to run its coal-fired power plants after 2030 unless the greenhouse-gas emissions from those plants are captured, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Wednesday.
His comment comes as electricity generation becomes the latest jurisdictional battle over climate policy between federal and provincial governments.
OTTAWA – More than two years after controversy first erupted around the firing of two scientists from Canada’s national microbiology lab, the federal government has finally come to an agreement with all opposition parties on a way forward to view the related secret documents.
Mark Holland, the government’s House leader, announced on Wednesday that three former judges would determine which documents related to the firing of Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng in January 2021 could be disclosed without compromising national security.
OTTAWA – Queen’s Park and Ottawa are at a standoff over funding for a multi-billion battery plant in Windsor, Ont., with the 2,500 jobs hanging in the balance as the company threatens to walk away if a deal can’t be reached.
Stellantis and its partner LG announced the battery plant in January 2022, pledging to create 2,500 new jobs in the community with the $5-billion plant. Details were kept secret at the time, but the company appears to have received $1 billion, split between the federal and provincial governments, to build the plant.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has declined to meet with the government’s special rapporteur on foreign interference, citing an inability to find a mutually convenient time, a spokesperson for Poilievre said Wednesday.
Poilievre has mocked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to appoint former governor general David Johnston to look into the matter of foreign interference, calling it nothing more than a delay tactic to avoid calling a public inquiry and describing Johnston as Trudeau’s “neighbour, family friend and ski buddy.”
While testifying before the Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC) in April, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the RCMP have taken “decisive action to shut down the so-called police stations” operating covertly on Canadian soil.
But when asked about that statement during an interview with CTV’s “Question Period” on May 14, the minister backtracked, saying that “the RCMP have taken concrete action to disrupt any foreign interference in relation to those so-called police stations.”
OTTAWA – NATO’s Secretary General is not denying that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau privately told the alliance Canada will never meet a defence spending target of two per cent of GDP.
“I’m talking and I’m consulting and I’m meeting with heads of state and government, prime ministers and presidents, across the lines almost every week,” Jens Stoltenberg said in a Canadian exclusive interview on CTV’s Power Play with Vassy Kapelos Tuesday. “There’s no way I can continue to sit down, discuss, with them if I start to report from each and every of those conversations.”
Ottawa and Queen’s Park are getting played by Stellantis but you can’t say they didn’t ask for it. By deciding to engage in a subsidy war with the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford ensured they would be held for ransom.
Politically, they have no choice now but to pay up. Mr. Ford and Mr. Trudeau have boasted so much about attracting electric-vehicle investments, they would both lose face if Stellantis packed up its marbles. They may argue in public over who should pay most of the ransom to prevent Stellantis from cancelling plans to build a $5-billion electric-vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont. But none of that will matter in the end.
Neither Ford nor Junior will lose any sleep over this heinous waste of tax payer money.
I’ve always believed the difference between the cost of a government subsidy and the value of the project it is subsidizing is nothing more than a political premium – the price the government of the day is willing to pay to bring an uneconomical project to a riding or region the ruling party feels is important to its re-election.
Conservative MP Michael Chong told a committee of fellow parliamentarians Tuesday that Canada needs to “catch up” to its allies on addressing foreign interference threats against politicians.
The Globe and Mail, citing a top secret document from 2021, reported earlier this month that the Chinese government was targeting a Canadian MP. An unnamed security source reportedly told the Globe that Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei was allegedly working on efforts to target Chong’s family in China.
Appearing before the House procedure and affairs committee Tuesday evening, Chong said the attempted interference “would likely not have happened” if Canada had policies in place similar to those in the U.S. and the U.K.
Policies similar to the US and UK? Are you crazy? That would mess up the China Grift!
Next week we’ll learn what advice former governor general David Johnston has given to Justin Trudeau to deal with the tentacular issues of Chinese government interference in Canada.
Make no mistake: Johnston has absolutely no decision-making powers, despite the high-sounding title of “Special Rapporteur” with which Trudeau saddled him.
Trudeau often says that he’s waiting for Johnston’s decision. That’s just more poppycock in a dossier filled with coverups, stonewalling and outright deception.
Champagne says Ontario needs to ‘pay fair share’ to end ‘stalemate’ with Stellantis
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne is calling on Doug Ford’s Ontario government to pay its “fair share” of subsidies in order to break the “stalemate” that saw Stellantis halt construction of its electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont., this week.
Stellantis said it stopped construction on a portion of the plant because the federal government had not delivered on what it promised and would move to “contingency plans” should Ottawa not fulfil its negotiation commitments.
“The message to our colleagues in Ontario is: ‘pay your fair share and we will bring this stalemate, if you want, to a conclusion,'” Champagne told reporters in Seoul, Korea on Tuesday.
How many cheques can Trudeau write with our money?
The federal government and many provincial governments have taken some big steps to seize the potential of the green transition, most recently with the $13-billion subsidy, multiyear subsidy for the St. Thomas, Ont., Volkswagen electric-vehicle battery plant. However, this is not a financially sustainable approach.
Less than a month after that subsidy’s price tag was revealed, news emerged that Ottawa is under pressure to match it for Stellantis STLA-N -0.62%decrease
and LG Energy Solution’s Windsor, Ont., battery plant, with construction at the site halted.
Canada is not a major player in the Lithium market. Nor will it ever be, though proximity to the US will help our reserves are a fraction of Australia’s and Chile’s.
It could be a coincidence. Within hours of the federal byelections being called on Sunday, a Conservative candidate named Branden Leslie plastered his campaign photo with a hearty “Let’s Go” logo on social media.
Presumably, it was meant to convey Leslie’s unbounded enthusiasm for the coming race in Manitoba’s Portage-Lisgar riding — and has nothing at all to do with “Let’s Go Brandon,” which has a very different connotation in American political-speak.
